The first door along the corridor was ajar. Anna hadn’t shown him this room, but Wyatt could tell from the smell and a rattling hum that it was the kitchen. He checked it quickly but knew Sugarfoot wouldn’t spend his time in such a distracting room. He moved to the next door. It, too, was open. He expected to find every door open. Sugarfoot would have gone from room to room after he’d got inside the house, opening doors so that he could move about unimpeded.
Wyatt stood at the very edge of the door. It led to a small bedroom-the spare bedroom, judging by the unused feel about it. The air was stale. A solitary single bed and bulky wardrobe occupied most of the space, but what interested Wyatt was that the room had been searched. The mattress lay at an angle on the metal bed frame and drawers had been emptied onto it. He waited, willing his senses to pick up Sugarfoot crouching there in a corner. He was conscious that he had the light behind him, that all Sugarfoot had to do was aim and fire. But he couldn’t afford to ignore this room before going on to the others. He had to check them all.
He lowered himself to the floor and began to pull himself into the room. His body scraped faintly on the dusty carpet. When he was well inside he edged first to the left and then to the right of the bed. By now he was in shadowy regions and his eyes had adjusted to the light.
Sugarfoot was not in the room.
Wyatt got up and moved silently back to the door. He stood where he could see along the corridor. The next doorway was not quite opposite this one.
He crossed quickly and entered in a rolling dive that took him across the room to the shelter of an armchair. Nothing. He was in Anna’s sitting room, next to the rug where they had made love. He could smell her perfume, but her three-seater couch was on its back and the armchairs had been slashed. The VCR/television unit had been tampered with. The digital clock was flashing, frozen at 19.43. He searched quickly. No-one.
That left the two front rooms, her bedroom and the dining room. Wyatt moved along to the end of the corridor, his back flattened to the wall. He stepped away from the wall, turned to face the front of the house, and heard the sound that saved his life: Masher butting through the cat-flap. Wyatt jerked back against the wall in fright, heard shots behind him, and felt a burning pain.
There were three shots, silenced, sounding like muffled coughs. He tumbled through the bedroom door and rolled across the carpet at the foot of the low-slung, queen-size bed.
He’d been grazed at waist level. The bullet had punched through his jacket and shirt and scored a furrow in the flesh under his rib cage. He lay winded on the floor. Blood was oozing into his shirt.
He’d been set up beautifully. Sugarfoot must have been hiding in the dark porch, waiting for him to pass through to the main part of the house where he would be framed, a perfect target, against the light filtering through the glass in the front door. And Sugarfoot had gone for the torso, grouping his shots at trunk level where he could be more certain of a hit.
Wyatt rolled over and onto his feet. He stood close to the edge of the door frame, giving himself a view of part of the corridor. Sugarfoot would no longer be there, but Wyatt fired five rapid shots with the silenced Browning. He heard the 9 mm slugs strike the wall at a shallow angle and deflect to the back reaches of the house. He kept his eyes closed, avoiding the muzzle flashes that cause temporary blindness.
It was no better than a delaying tactic, but it would keep Sugarfoot away and give himself time to think. He wouldn’t play a waiting game this time. He moved to the window. Light cotton curtains were drawn over it. He parted them, turned the window latch, pushed up the bottom pane, and climbed out.
He left the window wide open and crouched on the verandah, looking back into the room. The party down the street was very noisy now, an insistent pounding of bass notes and rowdy shouts. Sugarfoot would notice the increase in sound, assume that Wyatt had escaped through the window, and come to investigate.
Wyatt waited and listened, the long barrel of the Browning resting on the window sill, trained at the bedroom doorway. Several minutes went by. Suddenly something, a shoe, flew into the bedroom. Wyatt ignored it; Sugarfoot was trying to draw his fire, place him by the muzzle flash of his gun. Then, almost immediately, a shape stepped into the doorway.
Wyatt closed his eyes again and snapped off three shots. It was not blind firing: he had fixed the image of Sugarfoot, crouched in a shooter’s stance, gun held straight out in a two-handed grip. Wyatt trusted snap-shooting, knowing that instinct made him point straight, knowing too that he would lose his sense of field and perception if he looked too long at the target.
He heard his shots thud home. He saw the arms fly out, the gun drop, the body spin and fall.
He also saw that it wasn’t Sugarfoot Younger.
Forty-one
Wyatt slipped back into the house. He stood for a minute, watching the slumped shape on the floor. The man’s gun lay nearby, a silenced.22, a professional’s weapon. That explained the hit on Ivan Younger, the torture of Hobbs-these had been bothering Wyatt, they were too professional to be Sugarfoot’s. So who was this guy?
Satisfied that the gunman wasn’t faking it, Wyatt approached and crouched next to him.
‘I need a doctor,’ the man said.
Wyatt propped him against the door frame and loosened his belt and collar. He searched the man’s pockets. There was no identification. He looked at the face. It was tight, gaunt, the hair cropped close to the skull. The body was slight, wiry, suggesting fitness. The accent was unusual. South African, Wyatt thought.
The man coughed. His mouth filled with blood. He’d taken a bullet in the lungs, giving his voice and his breathing a frothy, whistling, watery quality. ‘My arm,’ he said.
The left elbow was shattered. Wyatt wrapped the fingers of the gunman’s right hand around a handkerchief over the welling blood.
The man seemed to doze, then collect himself. ‘You are Wyatt? Hobba described you. I am Bauer,’ he said. He seemed to be asking for recognition.
‘Never heard of you,’ Wyatt said. ‘Who hired you? The Youngers? Did you turn on them?’
Bauer frowned with effort, spat blood from his mouth and said, ‘The Youngers are nothing.’
‘Finn?’
‘Finn is nothing. He’s dead.’
Wyatt watched the face twisted in pain. ‘Because he lost the money? Were you brought in to get it back?’
Bauer didn’t reply but drooped and slid to one side. Wyatt forced him upright. ‘Listen to me. If you want a doctor, answer some questions.’
Bauer coughed. ‘You robbed the wrong safe, my friend. You’ve made powerful enemies. Give it back.’ He closed his eyes then. He’d gone grey; traces of blood flecked his slack mouth.
Wyatt said, ‘Finn was connected, is that what you’re trying to tell me?’
‘Give it back,’ Bauer said.
Wyatt leaned back to consider the problem, but the movement twisted his wound. He breathed in sharply, alerting Bauer, who said, ‘I hit you.’
Wyatt ignored him. ‘Three hundred thousand dollars isn’t exactly a fortune. Not enough to send someone like you after us. Whose toes did we tread on?’
Bauer coughed again, exhausting himself. His breathing was shallow. ‘I am dying.’
‘Answer,’ Wyatt said.
Bauer gathered himself. ‘The money was not important,’ he said finally.
‘Then what are you talking about. The insult?’
Bauer uttered a rattling laugh and subsided again. Wyatt tapped the Browning against the shattered elbow. Bauer screamed. ‘No mysteries,’ Wyatt said. ‘Explain.’
Bauer’s breathing was a series of wet gasps. He was close to the end. ‘Cocaine. Heroin. That rubbish. Give it back.’
Wyatt rocked back on his heels, going cold.
He’d been lookout on the street when Hobba and Pedersen blew the safe. There’d been that long delay before they gave him the all-clear to join them.